Sigh. “The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) plans to spend up to $450,000 in taxpayer dollars to teach Native American tribes in the Great Basin region “climate adaption plans” for their hunting, fishing and gathering activities.”

Just what we need, a bunch of bureaucrats from Washington want to teach Native Americans how to adapt to global warming as it affects their hunting, fishing and “gathering activities.”

Due to climate change, the natural landscapes are becoming impacted,” and the “traditional practices for hunting, fishing, and gathering for ceremonial purposes” can potentially create further impacts,” according to BLM’s Cooperative Agreement announcement.

“It is important to educate those who are engaging in these gathering activities to reduce impacts on public lands. If tribes are able to develop adaptation plans for their gathering activities, they would have a process to follow that could reduce negative impacts on the landscape,” the Request for Applications (RFA) explains.

Todd Hopkins, GBLCC’s science coordinator, said that the climate change adaptation training is focused on Great Basin tribes because they are “Place-based and their gathering is very much traditional in a sense that they use certain traditional foods and resources at certain times of the year, and because of climate shifts they are more impacted than other folks who may, say, go hunt in another place.

“President Obama announced the Tribal Climate Resilience Program in July. As part of this initiative, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will “dedicate $10 million in funding for tribes and tribal organizations to develop tools to enable adaptive resource management, as well as the ability to plan for climate resilience.”

“Tribes are at the forefront of many climate issues, so we are excited to work in a more cross-cutting way to help address tribal climate needs,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in the White House statement announcing the program. “We’ve heard from tribal leaders loud and clear: when the federal family combines its efforts, we get better results – and nowhere are these results needed more than in the fight against climate change.”

Did you ever hear such a foolish bunch of bureaucratese? “Gathering activities.” Is that the Shoshone-Bannock pow wow? I’m not sure when the camas is in bloom, or when you dig for roots, but the huckleberries ripen about August 15th. I don’t know if they get to shoot bison any more, probably not. “Climate resilience, indeed. Adaption plans. These people and their ancestors have been living on the land for ten thousand years, and don’t need bureaucrats to show them how to do it. The tribes get $90,000 for the first year, but I don’t know if it’s enough for forcing them to sit through more of this nonsense.

The photo is of the Shoshone National Forest, which is not a part of the reservation, but the land where Shoshones, Paiutes and Bannocks have made their home for a very long time.